Self portrait work in progress

I think adding colour at this stage is trying to run before you can walk.  concentrate on the placement of the features first and then move on to tone and rendering.  When you have mastered these then you will be ready for colour.  As the say, it is the tone that does the work, but the colour gets the credit.

I totally agree… keep drawing/rapid sketches for at least a year, then, when you’ve become reasonably proficient with the basic structure of the face, and mastered the all important tonal values with pencil/ink/charcoal or whatever you choose, then it’s time to move on to colour! There are no short cuts in portrait drawing, the more you draw, the better or more proficient you’ll eventually become. I would also suggest attending evening classes at college or your local art club. Drawing and observing from life will prove far more interesting and beneficial in your progress!

The drawing is interesting - there are some facial discrepancies (most obvious being the base of the nose and the shape and position of the eyes) and adding colour has rather emphasized those, perhaps.  I basically agree with my two chums above!  Portraiture is difficult - it takes a lot of study to begin to get right - preferably working from live models: I used to get friends to pose for me - some of them even stayed friends when they saw the results.....   And some cooled towards me considerably....  I should have known better than to ask a rather vain lady - I made her look like the Witch of Endor.  As a consolation prize, I painted her portrait in oil - sadly, she dropped dead before she saw it: and not BECAUSE she saw it.   Pencil portraits are the height of a portraitist's skill in my opinion, because while you can correct, smudge, add to, alter a painting, do that too often to a pencil drawing and you end up with a hideous mess, especially if you're at all heavy-handed (which I still tend to be).   Keep at it, follow the suggestions above if you can, keep the overall shapes in mind, and remember that perspective applies to the face and body as well as to buildings - measurement and angles are important; remembering also that even Marty Feldman's eyes were not disproportionately large ... we tend to exaggerate the size of the eye, because the eyes tend to be where we first look.